Legendary actor shockingly comes out in support of Donald Trump with space plea
A legendary actor has taken a surprising turn to the right after calling on President Donald Trump to make Pluto great again.
William Shatner, best known for playing Captain Kirk on Star Trek, pushed for the Republican leader to overrule scientists and declare that Pluto is once again the ninth planet in the solar system.
The actor blasted the scientific community on Thursday, calling members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) a bunch of 'idiots' for stripping Pluto of its status as a planet in 2006, which it had held since its discovery in 1930.
The 94-year-old took to X to voice his disgust with the scientific community after astronomers reportedly found a large mass in our solar system that some are calling the new 'Planet Nine.'
This new 'planet' is believed to be hanging out at the very edge of our solar system, billions of miles beyond Pluto, but astronomers still haven't even confirmed if it really exists.
Shatner, who has not openly come out as conservative or liberal, has been a long-time supporter of many progressive causes including the fight against climate change and Canada's universal healthcare system.
Now, the Emmy Award winner has apparently swung to the right, siding with MAGA supporters when it comes to President Trump's authority to intervene in typically apolitical matters - like the renaming of mountains and bodies of water.
'He renamed a Gulf and the Astronomer who discovered Pluto was American. Seems like America has jurisdiction on things outside its borders,' Shatner explained on X.
Shatner also took issue with scientists refusing to honor a public vote that chose the name Vulcan for one of Pluto's moons
The actor cited Trump's ability to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America while making the case for the White House to strip scientists of their naming privileges
Shatner is one of many people who still feels Pluto was undeservingly kicked out of our family of planets.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has publicly agreed with the screen legend on this issue, writing on X in 2021: 'Pluto is a planet. Fight me.'
In his fiery post, the sci-fi star declared that the scientists in charge of astronomical research were 'just a bunch of corrupt nerds on a power trip' and said it was time for Trump to end their 'tyranny of the cosmos.'
Shatner spent Thursday night sparring with fans on X and suggested that Trump should step in make Pluto a planet again.
He even called on Musk, the so-called 'first buddy,' to convince Trump to sign an executive order giving Pluto back its status in the cosmos.
It's a surprising turn for the actor, who recently criticized Trump for his continued attempts to purchase his home country of Canada.
In a recent interview with Bill Maher, the Shatner was baffled by the results of the 2024 presidential election.
'I don't know why Democrats lost. I don't understand [it],' he told Maher on the Club Random podcast.
The TV star also called on Elon Musk, a friend of President Trump, to lobby the White House to make the change
Shatner has not publicly supported Donald Trump and also recently expressed surprise that Kamala Harris was not elected president in 2024
Shatner isn't the first celebrity tied to the sciences to make a recent turn to the right.
His friend and noted scientist Neil Degrasse Tyson has been at the center of a liberal meltdown on social media after posting a picture with a red MAGA hat.
Tyson also posted recently about assault rifles and a recent trip to a shooting range with his wife, which drew the ire of the left on social media.
Shatner and Tyson are actually set to battle over the future of Pluto in June during a one-night show in Seattle.
Pluto was downgraded from the ninth planet to a dwarf planet in 2006, but a NASA expert and others have refused to accept the change. Former NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, Elon Musk, and William Shatner have all supported the cause of giving Pluto its planetary status back
Tyson, an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, has been a strong supporter of demoting Pluto from its status as a planet.
'Pluto is not only different from the other planets, it's part of a whole new family of objects,' he argued in his book The Pluto Files.
However, Shatner has some major support in this controversy, including the former head of NASA.
In 2019, Jim Bridenstine refused to accept the change, claiming that Pluto was still the ninth planet because it has an ocean under its surface, organic compounds on its surface, and its own moons.
'You can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I'm sticking by that, it's the way I learnt it, and I'm committed to it,' Bridenstine said at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019.
Bridenstine led the space agency from 2018 to 2021 after being appointed to the position during President Trump's first term in office. He's criticized the IAU for having a 'sloppy definition' of what they consider a planet.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Country star Kelleigh Bannen reveals she is pregnant with her second child as she details downside of IVF journey
Kelleigh Bannen has something to sing about. The country crooner has announced she was expecting her second child. The hitmaker, 44, who welcomed her first child, Mary Grant, 18 months in 2023, broke the news to her fans on Friday. In an interview with People, the Church Clothes singer revealed she and her husband Jeff Grossman, needed some medical help to grow their family. 'Our journey to parenthood involved IVF [in vitro fertilization], which means you know everything too soon!' the Today's Country host told the outlet. 'I feel like I've known I'm pregnant for ages at this point, even though we still have a ways to go. But I'm so overjoyed we are here. So thankful.' The experience, so far, has been a sweet one. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kelleigh Bannen (@kelleighbannen) 'I cannot get enough carbs and sweets when I'm pregnant, so I'm baking bread all the time,' she explained. 'Now that summer is here, I'm experimenting with peach cobblers, trying to perfect my recipe. Baby and I both enjoy taste testing each trial recipe!' Bannen revealed she is expecting a little sister for Mary Grant, who was also conceived through IVF. 'We are still playing with the order of the first name vs. the middle name, but we definitely plan to use a family name,' the Welcome to the Party singer divulged, without going into much detail. 'It's a name I'm very excited we get to pass down to her.' Like any parent, Bannen has been struggling to balance her very full work like with her home life. 'I recently spoke with Thomas Rhett about parenting and he said he lives by the mentality of "be where your boots are," which has really stuck with me,' Bannen explained. 'When I'm in an interview or making music, I want to be fully focused there, and when I'm home with my daughter I want to be fully focused on her as much as possible.' 'I don't think it's possible to have the perfect balance at all times,' she admitted, 'but I'm lucky to be able to do while also being a mom. I always hold onto that.' Sharing the good news on social media, the expectant mom revealed she was 'overjoyed' the new baby would be arriving in the early fall. 'There was a time we didn't know if we'd ever get to be parents, so to have the chance to add another baby into the mix is just so amazing,' said the grateful mom.
Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
The 14 best true crime documentaries to watch now, chosen by the Daily Mail's crime experts
The true crime obsession is here to stay – and audiences captivated by these tragic tales still can't look away. Real-life mysteries, killer plot twists and jaw-dropping courtroom revelations keep armchair detectives glued to their screens.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
These mysterious dark ‘streaks' on Mars aren't what scientists initially believed
Mysterious dark streaks first observed on Mars in the 1970s are not what many believed they were. Scientists now say the curious features that stretch for hundreds of meters down Martian slopes were likely signs of wind and dust activity — not water. 'A big focus of Mars research is understanding modern-day processes on Mars — including the possibility of liquid water on the surface,' Adomas Valantinas, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, said in a statement. 'Our study reviewed these features but found no evidence of water. Our model favors dry formation processes.' Valantinas and the University of Bern's Valentin Bickel coauthored the research which was recently published in the journal Nature Communications. To reach these conclusions, the researchers used a machine learning algorithm to catalog as many of the odd streaks as they could, creating a first-of-its-kind- global Martian map containing some 500,000 from more than 86,000 high-resolution images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Then, they compared their map to databases and catalogs of other factors, including temperature, wind speed, hydration, and rock slide activity. They looked for any correlations over hundreds of thousands of cases. The authors found that the ominous streaks that don't last for decades, known as recurring slope lineae or RSLs, are not generally associated with factors that suggest a liquid or frost origin. Those factors might include a specific slope orientation, high surface temperature fluctuations, and high humidity. The features were more likely to form in places with above-average wind speed and dust deposition. That points to a dry origin of formation, and they seem to show up in the same locations during the warmest periods of the Martian year before mysteriously vanishing. They concluded that the older slope streaks, which run down cliff faces and crater walls, most likely form when dust suddenly slides off slopes following seismic activity, winds, or even the shockwaves from meteoroid impacts. The streaks appear most often near recent impact craters, where shockwaves may shake the surface dust loose. The shorter-lived ones are typically found in places where dust devils or rockfalls are frequent. 'There were statistically significant correlations between new impact sites and the appearance of nearby slope streaks in certain regions, supporting this view,' NASA said. Previously, some had interpreted those streaks as liquid flows. It's possible that small amounts of water could mix with enough salt to create a flow on the frozen Martian surface, Brown University noted. The red planet was once more temperate, and there is water under the surface of Mars. Others believed they were triggered by dry process. These results cast new doubt on slope streaks and RSLs as habitable environments. 'That's the advantage of this big data approach,' Valantinas said. 'It helps us to rule out some hypotheses from orbit before we send spacecraft to explore.'
